I see where the New York Wage Board, or something like that has passed a $15 per hour minimum wage for Fast Food (pay first then get food) workers. I think they have a schedule to get there in 3 years. All these fry daddies are out celebrating. Maybe I am cynical (well I know I am) but I expect this is gonna showcase the Law of Unintended Consequences, big time. I expect most if not all of these folks will be cut and out of a fast food job before their ship ever comes in. What do you think?
I think this sucks, because those of us in the middle will suffer when businesses adapt by raising the cost of their goods. You want to make more than 7.50 an hour, don't be a fucking retard, and at least get my fucking order right.
Seattle has a $15 minimum wage and the law has had some unintended consequences. A large number of the minimum wage workers are asking their employers to cut back on their number of working hours. This is so they don't go over the salary cap and lose their food stamps, welfare or disability payments or have the amount reduced. They are working fewer hours for the same money. This leaves the employers short handed. Another negative consequence is that since restaurants are having to pay their kitchen staff $15 an hour they are adding a 15% surcharge to their customer's bills. As a result restaurant patrons are tipping less. The kitchen help is making more money but the waiters are taking a pay cut. I can't see the same thing not happening in New York.
Maybe you are, but this isn't cynicism, its realism, something the people that forced this to happen can't acknowledge. And when the inevitable price hikes and layoffs follow, they still won't acknowledge the reality of what they've caused.
Most fast food is already paying $8.50 to $10 an hour and will keep raising it or lose employees. Minimum wage needs to reflect reality and $7.50 is too damn low. $15 may be too damn high in baton Rouge, but in Seattle or New York, its reasonable. Everybody elses wages have gone up in the last 20 years, no reason for minimum wage not to keep pace. but doubling it instantly will cause problems for everybody.
Red, I hear you, but in the age where Pell Grants are showered on the poor, with no supervision, AT ALL, I have little if any sympathy for those not able to use education to move up the wage scale. None!
No one makes a career out of minimum wage. But there is no need to start them in the hole. We need to ask ourselves, why is the free market paying more than minimum wage? Because the jobs are worth more. I have little sympathy for those who choose not to work. But I do have some sympathy for those who are working but not for enough to get by on. It takes a long time to graduate from Community College working for minimum wage and doing exactly what they should be doing. I have no sympathy whatsoever for businesses getting fat by scalping low-level employees.
Red, I don't get his at all. The minimum wage protects workers in jobs that the free market does NOT think are worth that much. That is why it is called MINIMUM WAGE. If that floor was not there, people in those jobs, in all likelihood would be earning less. I am all for letting the market decide the value of all jobs, with no minimum, like you suggested.
I didn't suggest no minimum! I said that minimum needs to go up when all other wages have gone up. $7.35 is simply not a living wage in this country any more. Do you imagine that it can never change? Big fast food chains are paying more than minimum wage because they can't find people to work for less. But many local businesses are taking advantage of people who don't have a lot of opportunities and paying them less than they can live on. Do the math. Someone making minimum wage makes about $14,500 a year, barely above the poverty line for a single person and well below it for a family of two. $1200 a month . . . and rent will take about $500 of that, bus fare will take another 100, food will be about $250, utilities will be $160, leaving $190 for clothing, phone, laundry, medical expenses, furniture, and other necessary expenses. That doesn't leave anything for a few beers, a used car note, a date on Saturday night or a ball game on Sunday. There are damn few jobs where employees don't get a raise from time to time. Minimum wage just sets a fair bottom. I pay my student workers minimum wage when they are new freshmen, but if they work out I quickly bump them to $10 or I can't keep them.
